Mysterious ticks from Asia that can carry a deadly virus and drain cattle of their blood are now in the US — and efforts to kill them are failing

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• Last November, an Icelandic sheep in New Jersey was found to be covered by Haemaphysalis longicornis or East Asian longhorned ticks.
• These ticks can carry a deadly virus known as SFTS and may also be able to transmit Lyme Disease and other pathogens.
• The ticks survived the winter and have survived efforts to eradicate them.
• That’s not good.

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It wasn’t just one strange tick that caused Hunterdon County Health Department officials in New Jersey to start panicking when a resident showed up to ask about what she found crawling all over her sheep.

There were what turned out to be — on the resident, her sheep, and in the paddock — hundreds of them.See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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